Apple nearly ditched the iPhone, designer admits

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Few outside Apple will have known that the company considered shelving the popular productMandy Cheng/Getty

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“There were multiple times when we nearly shelved it because there were fundamental problems that we couldn’t solve,” Sir Jonathan Ive saidCarl Court/Getty

Murad Ahmed

Last updated at 12:01AM, July 31 2012

It is the phone that changed what people expect from their mobiles, sold
millions worldwide and helped to make Apple into the world’s most valuable
company. But, according to its British designer, the company came close to
scrapping the iPhone altogether.

Speaking in London yesterday, Sir Jonathan Ive, senior vice-president of
design at Apple, said that the technology group had worked on a number of
“incredibly compelling” products in the past few years, but decided to stop
their development because of insurmountable design problems. The iPhone’s
key innovation — the touchscreen — appeared to be the reason why the device
was also